Beautify the city or improve its choking transportation system?

Beautify the city or improve its choking transportation system?

Yogita Tahilramani
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

To Governor Sutiyoso, spending Rp 14 billion on renovating a
water fountain at a Jakarta traffic circle may have seemed a wise
gift for the capital's anniversary last week, but residents here
who commute to work daily consider it an insult.

Residents say they believe the money could have been put to
better use had it been spent on overhauling the poorly performing
transportation system in Jakarta, particularly rail.

Advertising consultant Alex Prihandoyo, 32, said on Sunday
that Sutiyoso seemed to have forgotten that incoming commuters
during the day pushed the city's population from 8.3 million to
11 million.

Nila Rustam, 28, works at a cafe in Depok and rides an old,
rattling train from Kota station in Central Jakarta to her
workplace in fear that "an accident" is bound to happen.

"The trains move from side to side and are really crammed,
with people sitting and standing around me. If an accident
occurred, it would not be surprising," Nila said.

The present transportation system in Jakarta comprises both
rail and bus systems. The buses are chaotic, without any proper
control over operations. The problem is worsened by the presence
of angkot (public minivans), which leads to inefficiencies in the
system.

D.A. Simarmata of the School of Economics at the University of
Indonesia, recently wrote in this paper that public
transportation in the city was not part of an integrated system,
like that in industrialized countries.

A visible characteristic of its disintegration, he said, was
the terminals and the points of passenger transfer from one bus
route to another.

There is also no reliable schedule within the bus system, let
alone a coordinated schedule within and between the bus system
and the rail system, he added.

Asked why railway officials did not coordinate with those from
the bus system, spokesman for state-owned railway company PT
Kereta Api (PT KA) Zainal Abidin said, "How could we consider
that? Our main concern is making sure that trains are in
operational condition."

He said most of the 213 trains running across Greater Jakarta
daily were purchased in 1976, and spare parts for trains,
available from countries like Japan, Korea or Belgium, were
extremely expensive.

Zainal said on Monday that electric commuter trains were a
loss-making business.

"The joke doing the rounds among railway staffers here is that
when the trains don't run, we lose Rp 15 billion per year; when
they do, we lose Rp 50 billion," Zainal said. He was serious.

Official data from PT KA states that in 2000, electric trains
in Jakarta incurred losses of Rp 69.5 billion, due to mounting
electricity bills, fuel price hikes, economy class discount
rates, ticket scalpers and increasing numbers of people who took
free rides. In 2001, the losses amounted to Rp 52.7 billion.

Reasons for these losses can range from critical matters, such
as electricity bills, to overcrowding of train cars, which should
normally accommodate up to 140 people, but are today crammed with
400 on a daily average, most of whom are free-riders.

"This is not counting the people who sit on top of the cars
free of charge, and who risk getting killed in doing so. We are
also struggling to pay our electricity bills," Zainal said.

In 1999, PT KA had to pay up Rp 17.7 billion in outstanding
bills for Bogor station, after the state electricity company
(PLN) threatened to cut off power to its station.

"We also need to change 546 wheels on electric commuter
trains, as they are wearing out. We have no money," he said.

Electric commuter trains in Jakarta accommodate up to 400,000
passengers on average, but there are only 800 railway staff
including ground staff, a reason why it is almost impossible to
keep track of joyriders.

The government has said it would raise transportation fares by
28 percent to 40 percent in two stages, starting this month and
on Jan. 1, 2003. It had earlier come up with plans to cope with
the traffic problems but nothing seems to have been implemented.
There were plans years ago to build a mass rapid transit (MRT)
system in the form of subways, but the cost was beyond reach,
leading to its postponement.

Jakarta has 5,411 large buses, 4,981 medium-sized buses and
11,848 minivans. Only 68 percent of the total currently operate
as the rest are in need of repair.

The city administration, Zainal said, needed to carry out a
thoroughgoing review of the whole transport system, before it
spent billions on projects such as renovating an already-working,
and beautiful, water fountain.